Raikkonen Encouraged by Quick Start

McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen was encouraged after he upstaged World Champion Michael Schumacher with the fastest time in Friday's free practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Finn Raikkonen, last year's Championship runner-up, underlined the improving competitiveness of McLaren after their nightmare start to the season in clocking 1:20.884, more than eight-tenths of a second quicker than last year's pole set by Renault's Fernando Alonso.

"A positive start to the weekend," said the Finn. "We completed our pre-planned programme without any problems. As always we were busy evaluating tyres, and I believe we have a good picture of what we are going to do.

"The car handled well straight away which is always an advantage. However, it's early days and we need to see what happens tomorrow, but for sure it's better to be first on a Friday than 10th."

McLaren teammate David Coulthard completed a positive day for the Mercedes-powered team by setting the fourth quickest time, 0.319 seconds behind Raikkonen.

"An encouraging start, but obviously we have to wait and see how the weekend develops," said Coulthard.

"However, we had a good chance to evaluate the set up and tyres, so a good day's work, The past has shown that it's very difficult to overtake at this circuit, so a strong starting position is important, and I think we are going in the right direction."